FAEMEES' INSTITUTES. 249 



setting fence-posts by reversing, salting, and charring, is satisfied tliat charring 

 did no good. Salting dry posts was beneficial, but upon green ones it was use- 

 less. The best thing was reversing the ends. Of the various kinds of timber 

 of which posts are made red and yellow cedar rank the highest for durability, 

 aside from the effects of any preserving process. Swamp oak, I think, is con- 

 ceded to stand next in order, with upland white oak following. Kail fences 

 are really more expensive tlian board fences, and unless staked and wired are 

 almost continually in need of repair. Tliey nourish all sorts of pestiferous 

 weeds and bushes, which become in time ugly and deformed spots and detract 

 decidedly from the thrifty appearance of the farm. If a farmer must build 

 with rails, let him make the fence straight by setting upright stakes bound 

 together by wire to hold the ends of the rails to place, otherwise the fence will 

 employ nearly twice as much ground. A zigzag rail fence, called by some so 

 charmingly picturesque (perhaps on account of the briers, hazel bushes, and 

 stone piles encompassing it), takes up a strip of land four or five feet wide, and 

 if staked and ridered about two feet, thereby obtaining from every 100 aci'es 

 fully five acres of land, or 500,000 acres of the fenced lands of this State which 

 are rendered worse than useless. What farmer would willingly endure a gov- 

 ernment five per cent, tax upon the value of his land? Yet this is just what he 

 voluntarily inflicts upon himself in thus losing the use of land besides the cost 

 of the fence. Wire fencing is receiving some attention from farmers at the 

 present day, but as yet it is an open question whether it is practically useful. 



It can be built cheaper than ordinary board fence, as the following compari- 

 son Avill testify : One mile of board fence, made of six inch boards, and with 

 posts eight feet apart, will cost •f>219.84, while the same length of wire fence, 

 built of No. wire not annealed, and with one six-inch board for the bottom, 

 will cost 8160.76, a difference in favor of the wire fence of 159.08. The posts 

 supporting the wire should be set not more than seven feet apart, and very deep, 

 bracing them with strong timbers resting against short posts set in tlie ground 

 for the purpose, as the tension of the Avires makes the whole strength of the 

 fence, and it is almost impossible to set posts tliat will not yield to the constant 

 strain. An Illinois farmer says his fence of No. 7 for the upper wire, No. 8 for 

 the second wire, and No. 9 for the two lower wires, built in stretches of forty 

 rods, costs seventy cents per rod, and proved effectual. But as a general thing 

 fencing with wire has not proved a success. If made cheap it is not effectual, 

 and if made effectual it is not economical. Many farmers are now at great 

 expense preparing or putting out hedges of osage orange, which will in time 

 prove to them a most vexatious burden. The principal objections to this plant 

 are that it grows too vigorously, and is a most greedy absorber of all the nutri- 

 ment in the soil within reach of its long roots. Nothing goes through it, and 

 it is equally true that nothing will grow near it. There are quite a variety of 

 plants used for the purpose of hedges, but the two leading ones are osage orange 

 and thorn. As a general rule, any plant that naturally grows to a tree makes 

 a poor hedge plant. For the purpose of a hedge, there is no evergreen at the 

 north equal to the arbor vita3. It is very hardy, and limbs grow thickly from 

 the ground twenty feet high, if desired. It is of slow growth, and does not 

 naturally grow to a large tree, flourishing in almost any kind of soil, if not too 

 dry. 



Concerning the different varieties of fence of which I have spoken, some are 

 relatively more serviceable than others, but none are indispensably necessary 

 to profitable farming. It may be requisite for the present that highway fences 



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